by Mary Duke
“You can’t do that,” Illiah said. “If she gets a hold of that ring, we’re dead. Not only us, but the realms, all the realms.”
Illian shook his head. “You’re overreacting. If I give her this ring, she promised that we would be together again.”
“Yeah,” Illiah shot back. “Together and dead.”
“Someone is coming!” Kegan said pushing me behind him.
“Not just someone, love,” the Queen said, walking out from behind a tree, Quint trailing her. “Yours truly.”
Fabien walked towards his father. “What are you doing? How could you help her?”
Quint smiled. “I did this for us, Fabien. So that we could both be free.”
“This is not the way you earn freedom,” Fabien said walking closer.
Quint hissed, meeting his son halfway. “I should not have to earn my freedom, let alone yours! That bastard,” he said pointing at Illian., “went back on the deal I had made with Thanatos.”
“I went back on nothing,” Illian replied. “The rules were clearly stated. As long as Zavery lived, you were indebted for breaking the law. However, I can see now that it’s the Queen who bears the curse…so your debt lies on her beating heart.”
Quint went to take a step around Fabien towards Illian, but Fabien stopped him. “I won’t let you do this.”
Quint pointed at Illian. “We were friends, you could have let this go. You,” he repeated. “All of this is on you.”
Leaning in towards Fabien, Quint whispered into his ear, “Again, we will meet…and it will be soon.”
Before Illian could choose the words to respond, he was silenced by Fabien’s body falling to the ground and Quint wiping the blood from his knife on his pants.
“You killed him!” Illiah shrieked.
“I did what had to be done,” Quint replied calmly. “And I will do whatever it takes to see this job through.”
Illiah ran towards him. “He was my friend, he was like my brother!”
Chasing after her, I watched Zavery go after his mother with waves of magic, everything and anything he could think of.
Quint, however, ran towards us, dodging Illiah and her blade, and grabbing a hold of my shoulders while I watched Zavery.
***
The forest was gone. The brisk sea air was gone. The light was gone. All of it replaced by darkness.
“It’s refreshing, isn’t it?” Quint’s voice echoed.
I slowly spun around hoping to catch a glimpse of him, but the darkness was too blinding. “What is?”
“The darkness,” he replied. “Solidarity.”
I remained silent. If I couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see me.
Quint continued, “I love it, myself. There’s no one to fuck shit up. No one leaning over your shoulder.”
His voice began to grow distant, and part of me panicked at the thought of being lost, so I answered, knowing he’d reply and I could follow. “But you are not alone, you are with the Queen.”
“For now,” he grumbled. “But not for much longer.”
“What, your partnership not working out?”
Quint laughed, the howl echoing off the stone walls. “Why don’t you ask your friend, Jethero? Oh wait, you can’t, you got him killed!”
“No,” I replied. “I just spoke with him yesterday.”
Quint’s voice crept closer, “I know. I caught him and that filthy blooded leach reaching out to you.”
“What does Tamara think about that?” I asked, sensing her close.
“She doesn’t know,” Quint spat. “The Queen doesn’t think she can handle it.”
Light encompassed us, illuminating the cavern walls. I was right, we were in one of Morte’s caverns.
When my eyes adjusted to the light, a figure became visible between Quint and I, two large spheres of fire rotating on its hands.
“What did you do to my father, and where is my brother?” Tamara’s small voice echoed off the walls.
Quint didn’t answer.
“Where are they?” Tamara demanded before the tunnel we were in became engulfed in flames.
Using my magic, I created a bubble of water around me, though from Quint’s cries, I don’t believe he was so lucky.
***
*Zavery*
I couldn’t think straight, the only thing I could see was Tork being obliterated before my eyes.
She had taken him from me. She had taken the one thing I had left. The one thing that mattered. She destroyed it, just as she had destroyed my life.
Everything was different now. I was different now. I no longer had anything to lose. I no longer cared what she would do in retaliation for my actions because she no longer had anything to take from me.
It had to end. Her life had to end, before she stripped anyone else of their reason to live, as she had done me. I am going to put an end to this chaos. I am going to end her.
Before she had a chance to speak, to spew her treacherous plan, I lost control of my thoughts.
One after another, I fired whatever came into mind at her, the worst that I could think of. I watched myself, as though the person firing wasn’t me.”Zavery,” Alec, my dragon, pleaded with me. ”You can’t kill her; if she dies we all die.”
I ignored him. I no longer cared if I died, as long as she died first.
I continued to fire curses at her one by one until it became a constant stream of twisted light and dark magic. I cast many of the same curses she used on me when I was a child. ‘Testing your endurance.’ ‘Building your strength.’ ‘Giving you character.’ She would say, as I lay helpless on the ground when she was finished. Not. This. Time… And NEVER again!
***
*SNO*
“Tamara,” I said as the flames vanished, leaving the cavern dark once again. “I need to get back to Soleil Peak. My friends are up there going against the Queen.”
“She’s mine,” Tamara said, her body illuminating a fiery shade of orange as she walked towards me.
“We can’t kill her,” I said, causing her to stop. “At least not yet. She’s been collecting souls, feeding off of them. If she dies, the souls have nowhere to go, because there is no one to pass them through to the underworld…it will tear our realms apart.”
“What can I do?” Tamara said. “She killed my brother…my father.”
“Get me back to the top, help me get Illiah’s father off the island so we can free Thanatos… Once he is free and can release the souls, she’s yours.” I said reaching out to her as she walked closer.
“Do I have your word?” Tamara asked wrapping her hands around my wrists.
“You have my word,” I promised.
Just as quick as Quint had brought us into the caverns, Tamara returned me to the peak.
Illiah was with her father, behind one of the boulders, and Zavery was unleashing hell on his mother.
“Zavery,” I yelled running to him, dodging the sparks of ricocheting magic. “You cannot kill her, not yet!”
“This isn’t your call, Sno. Stay out of this!” he replied, his focus remaining on her.
Tamara stepped between the Queen and Zavery and the fighting stopped. “This ends now.”
“Move,” the Queen said. “Or I will move you.”
“I have not severed our link, in fact, I’ve made it stronger. If you kill me,” Tamara said holding up a clear stone with bits of hair trapped inside. “You’ll die with me.”
The Queen charged at Tamara, and the two of them vanished.
***
*ILLIAH*
“What are you doing?” Illian cried as I pulled him behind one of the boulders.
“Give me the ring,” I demanded.
“I can’t,” he replied. “This is all we have to barter with. This,” he said holding up his hand. “This will get us our freedom.”
“There is no us,” I corrected him quietly.
“What do you mean there is no us?” Illian asked confused.
“I made a deal,” I sta
rted to explain. “The only way Nyx would give me my powers back is if I agreed to do something.”
Illian closed his hand and pulled it to his chest. “Illiah, what did you do?”
“I did what my father would have done… I did what he taught me to do. I did what was right,” I told him.
“You can’t trust them, Illiah,” he pleaded with me. “Whatever they told you, it was a lie.”
“They didn’t lie to me,” I corrected him. “They simply stated fact. The Queen cannot handle the amount of power she’s collecting from the souls, it’s going to tear her apart and tear apart the realms along with it.”
“She has my pendant,” Illian said. “With that, she can pass on the souls she no longer needs.”
“No,” I again corrected him. “You must have the power of a god, and she doesn’t.”
“But I can give it to her,” he said grabbing a hold of my hands.
I shook my head. “Her heart is dark. There is no light. She is power hungry, and there will be no end to her hunger.”
Illian opened his mouth to speak but closed it before saying a word. He knew of that hunger, he knew that with the power would come paranoia and a spiraling downfall.
“I have to return this ring to Thanatos,” I said wrapping my fingers around it. “Once he is free, and we get the pendant from the Queen, order can be restored.”
“Have someone else do it. Thanatos will kill you!” Illian said, shaking his head.
“Grandma is dead,” I told him. “My mother is dead. I am the only one who can get into the vault where he is.”
“I’m not, let me do it,” he pleaded.
I paused before pulling the dagger Nyx had given me from my waist.
“Illiah, what are you doing?” Illian said beginning to slide away from me.
I jerked the ring from his finger and tucked it in my pocket. “I made a deal,” I said trying to control my emotions.
“Illiah,” he said, raising his hand up to my face.
“And unlike you, I’m not going back on it,” I said plunging the blade into his heart.
As the blade and my father turned to dust, the wind blew and the ground beneath my feet quaked, as a surge of power raced through my veins. Nyx knew I held up the first end of our deal, now it was time to handle the last.
EPILOGUE
Illiah
I spoke to no one. I couldn’t. Every part of me felt as though it was being torn apart.
He gave me everything. Everything he did, he did for me. To give me the best… His choice may not have been the best, but his heart was in the right place, and I drove a stake through it. I killed him. That was a choice I could never take back…an action I could never undo. Nyx saw to that.”Has the plan changed?” Hayes asked reaching out to me.”No,” I replied. ”Just you and I are going in.””If I may ask,” Hayes asked, knowing everything I was thinking and how likely I was to fall off the edge. ”Why aren’t you bringing your friends?””Zavery didn’t do too well last time we were there, and I know Sno isn’t going to want to leave him alone right now… They need to stay together if we’re going to make it through this.” I said trying to convince both he and I that it was the right thing to do. However, truth be told, I couldn’t face them. The way they looked at me…the shock on their faces as they watched me destroy my father. I had to keep my head on straight; I couldn’t let their judgment distract me.”Focus,” Hayes said, again pulling me from my tangled web of thoughts. ”Picture him, let the thought of Thanatos consume you.””Alright,” I said though no matter how hard I tried, the more I thought of him, the more I thought of my father.”ILLIAH!” Hayes yelled pulling up at the last moment before we crashed into the mountain.”Sorry,” I said. ”Make another loop, I got this.” If you don’t want your father's death to be for nothing, I told myself, you have to concentrate.
The second time we aimed for the mountain, the portal opened just in time to let us in, before sealing the others outside.
We were in a large opening, lit by the torches that lined the walls.
One man stood in the center of a large empty white circle.
“Hayes, you’ve brought me a friend. Why don’t you help her in, so we can have a chat?”
“Thanatos,” I questioned.
“The one and only,” he replied, walking to the edge of the circle in front of me.
“Come on,” Thanatos said eyeing Hayes. “You did come to let me out, right?”
“Not exactly,” I answered for him. “At least not unless you’re willing to make a deal.”
“I wasn’t speaking to you, Il-lee-ah. I was talking to my dragon,” he said, his voice full of attitude.
“One, is that really the way you want to speak to your first guest in what…in hundreds of years? And two, Hayes is no longer your dragon, he is mine.”
“You’re fucking kidding me, right?” Thanatos said breaking out in a fit of laughter. “Your dragon? Hayes is your dragon? As if stabbing me in the back and stealing my powers for you wasn’t enough, your father had to steal my damn dragon too?””Need I remind you, dragons choose their riders, Thanatos?” Hayes said reaching out to both of us.
“Rubbish,” he replied walking back towards me. “Is that what you came here to do? Rub it in my face that my dragon, the dragon of hell, is now yours?”
“No,” I said reaching in my pocket and winging his ring at his face. “I came here to give you this.”
He twisted the ring in his fingers. “What did you do to it? Where is my magic?”
“It’s there,” I assured him. “But you see, that circle you are standing in binds everything inside, including the magic in that ring, to the mountain, and more specifically the one who controls the mountain, and as of two days ago…that’s me.”
Thanatos’ eyes narrowed.
“Now, if you want me to break this circle and therefore return the magic to you, you are going to have to listen to me.”
Thanatos’ eyes wandered from Hayes to me and back to his ring.
“If you have something better to do, I’m sure Hayes and I could come back at another time,” I said turning from him as I walked away.
“What is it?” he asked, his voice deep. “Something major has to be going on if my mother is willing to let me be freed.”
“Well, there’s a woman who wields the strongest dark magic our realms have ever seen; she now has your abilities as a reaper and is able to collect souls. However, she doesn’t have the strength of a God, so instead of passing the souls on into the underworld, she feeds off of them.”
“I don’t see how this is my problem,” Thanatos replied.
“She’s unsteady. The more souls she reaps, the frailer her soul becomes. She’s taken on too much power, and when her soul explodes, it’s taking the realms with it, all of them.” I replied.
“Oh, is that all?” he questioned, a smirk growing on his face. “My family needs the king of chaos to reign in a little witch?”
“Actually no,” I said, returning his smile sarcastically. “Your family needs to keep the little witch from falling into the hand of the Queen of Death.”
Thanatos paused, the smirk leaving his face. “Hel?”
“Yes,” I replied. “Your sister has found her way back.”
About The Author
Mary Duke
A true believer that there is magic all around us.
Mary Duke was drawn to the fantasy genre at a young age and instantly she found herself writing stories of her own.
For as long as she can remember she has longed for the knowledge of worlds that didn’t exist. This is in fact what prompted the creation of the Of The Realms Chronicles, a world made up of Realms filled with creatures both known and unknown, where the knowledge was limitless.
Mary Duke is a mother of three, fur mom to four, and resides in Ohio with her husband. When not writing, you can find her camping, exploring, or secretly adding another journal to her collection.
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Books By This Author
Of The Faye: Soul (Book Three)
Dragons, Goddesses, Gods, Faye, Reapers, Magic...
Treachery: betrayal of trust; deceptive action or nature.
Every strand of the web weaved by The Queen, Illian, and Nyx was laced with Treachery, and now our trio is struggling to untangle to mess.
When trust is absolutely key, Sno has every reason to doubt Zavery. The weight of his past on his shoulders is more than enough to cause the strongest of men to crumble. Everything she believed she knew about him is being proven false, and for the first time in her life she realized she doesn't know who he is at all.
Will they be able to see through the lies, and power grabs when the time comes or will they succumb to believe the lies as truths?
Bloodline: Hunted (Book One)
Get ready for the most unlikely alliance you've ever seen. What was once an Alpha line of Werewolves, the Hollow Wolves are now in scattered, fearing for their lives as they hide in the shadows. Narah Night, the last living Hollow Alpha, doesn't hide, it's not in her nature. After years of escaping the hunters, by pure luck, she teams up with a Dark Faye, and together, they set out to find what's left of her kind. With nothing to lose, Narah vows to bring vengeance to those who are leaving her kind slaughtered across the country. What she doesn't expect is to be kidnapped, by one of her own kind...Or to team up with death itself.
Bloodline: Warrior (Book Two)
When you have nothing left to lose, you become willing to do whatever it will take for hope.
